From left: Rosalind J. Wright, MD, MPH; Manish Arora, PhD, MPH; the two moderators, Shevon Skinner, RN, MSN, MPH, Director of Patient Services, LSA Family Health Service in East Harlem, and Maida Galvez, MD, MPH, Associate Professor, Environmental Medicine and Public Health; David Bellinger, PhD; and Avi Reichenberg, PhD.
“The Decade of the Developing Brain,” a symposium held in honor of the tenth anniversary of the Department of Environmental Medicine and Public Health’s Children’s Environmental Health Center, could arguably be summed up by these three points: “Our environment is complex and constantly changing. Prenatal and early postnatal life are critical periods that can affect lifelong health,” said Manish Arora, PhD, MPH, Vice Chair of the Department of Environmental Medicine and Public Health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. And finally, “Save your teeth.”
At the half-day symposium, held at the New York Academy of Medicine on Friday, February 24, a keynote speech by David Bellinger, PhD, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston Children’s Hospital, outlined the population-level effects of environmental chemicals on neurodevelopment. Avi Reichenberg, PhD, Professor of Psychiatry, and Environmental Medicine and Public Health, addressing the complexity of autism risk, said multiple published studies have concluded that “there is no association between vaccination and the risk for autism. Yet unfortunately this comes up again and again.”
Rosalind J. Wright, MD, MPH, Horace W. Goldsmith Professor in Children’s Health Research and Dean of Translational Biomedical Sciences at the Icahn School of Medicine, discussed the relationship between a mother’s physical response to stress and fetal development. “When you are living with chronic financial strain, violence, and discrimination, it can have effects on the developing baby, starting in pregnancy with particular implications on the developing brain,” she said. On the positive side, she also showed evidence indicating that good nutrition and “sensitive, responsive, supportive care” can buffer young children from the effects of stress.
Dr. Arora called the study of the developing brain a “relay race” in which bench scientists like him supply packets of information that clinicians and researchers in the field can act upon. One of his major contributions is developing new techniques to study human teeth, which have growth rings that each day capture information about chemical exposure and nutrition—a hard drive of biologic information. Dr. Arora advised attendees not to throw away the teeth they shed, saying, “They are more valuable than you think.”
For video, photos, and more information about the Symposium, please go to: https://decadeofdevelopingbrain.wordpress.com/.